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Ugh. What a fucking weekend.
The more astute of you may have noticed that I wasn't around from
Wednesday night onwards. Yeah, that's a pretty bad result. What's even
worse is that my parents were here. After the logistic nightmare of
trying to find them, entailing me walking the better part of the length
of Leopoldstrasse, all eight sodding kilometres of it and then some, we
embarked on a weekend of walking, talking, and very little smoking on my
part.
Yes, the food was good. Aside from pay-day, it's the only time I'm going
to be able to afford to eat steak. And I got my bag, and some more of my
books. And I guess it was even nice seeing them. But even so... It's not
that I dislike my parents. Rare occasions such as these I can stand to
be around them for a fair while. They just refuse to see that I have
changed. When I first headed off to Uni, I decided I didn't want to be
the butt of quite so many jokes related to my past. So when I went away,
I was myself. No awkward past to worry about, things were good and I was
surviving. Unfortunately, they don't see how much of a change this is.
And constantly being reminded of my past is not my idea of a fun time. I
put that behind me. I don't like being reminded of what I was like, what
I used to do. That's no longer me. I am who I am now, not who I was a
few years ago.
That, and I can't smoke when they are around. As long as it's my cash
that's paying for it, I think my dad would probably be okay with it. But
my mother's an ex-smoker; one that has quit. She's okay most days, she's
under control. It's just the thought of her kids going down the same
route she did that makes her flip out. I don't smoke for fun. I smoke
related to the amount of stress in my life. While I'm out here, I'm
averaging 5 a day, which ain't bad. Not like I'm a 40-a-day chimney,
after all. But if she so much as smells smoke on me, I'm doomed.
Yes, I'm twenty. Why should I care about what they think? Simple. Money.
Dosh. Moolah. Folding Green. Marks. Bread. If they think I'm wasting my
money on cigarettes, then their train of thought runs along the lines of
"Why should I give him money if he has enough to afford to smoke?" A
painful situation, when I'm going to need their financial support
throughout my final year.
The second day's always the hardest. I quit whenever I'm at home, sure,
but the constant amount of things to get annoyed at, the insanity and
the parental behaviour both, give me something to direct my annoyance
at, a way to ignore the cravings. Here, when I could head home every
night, I had and have nothing like that. So, the second day was torture.
Once at home, at about 5 PM, I chained my way through three. Sad as it
sounds, I felt a lot better for it. This sorry practice continued for
the whole duration of their visit.
I was playing tour guide so much after the first fateful night that
nothing too much was said that I could get angry at them for. I didn't
see them enough to get mad, and in a way that makes me wish I had spent
more time with them.
Hold on. I must be fucking drunk. More time with them? No way. I spent
enough time with them. If they'd started getting to me, I might just
have had to get violent. Especially on the cramped train back from
Innsbruck, where people expected me to get out of my way not because
they asked, but because they hit me in the head with a bag. So, I kicked
the bastards in the shins. A bag has nothing on a very pissed off Brit
student assaulting some pathetic Austrian moron with a pair of steel
toed boots because said Austrian has more legs than brain cells.
There. I'm getting my old edge back. I need some vodka, and a dog to
flavour my coffee with.
* * *
It turns out that the big Governmental fuckups are immune to both
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, and Zen. Even without me ranting
about them, or even being in the same country, they can continue to
happen.
Take, for instance, the Millennium Polyp. That festering boil upon the
anus of the planet. The world's most efficient way of wasting money.
It's taking £35,000 per day to keep it closed. Thirty-five thousand
fucking English pounds. For what? For nothing, that's what! It's the
biggest waste of money yet. The location was shite, the innards while it
still had them were pointless, and now it's costing us a cubic fuckton
of cash to do nothing with it. Bollocks to it! Blow the fucking thing
into orbit, sell it to whoever will buy it, but please, for the sakes of
all of the gods and goddesses that have even a passing interest in these
fucking islands stop it costing us any more sodding money! Nobody wanted
it in the first place. There was no point to it. There is no point to
it. Shit on a cricket, give me a chainsaw, a sledgehammer and a crowbar
and I'll stop the damn thing costing you money. But will the British
Government do anything about it? Not a chance.
It's as bad as the Wembley stadium disaster. Three managers have come
forward to tell the FA that they could get a new national stadium built
right now for a set amount. That price wouldn't escalate. But would the
FA listen? Would they bollocks. They're a bunch of moronic Southern
ponces, perfectly willing to shit on whoever they can in the vain hope
of making a slight profit. And I am fucking sick of it! They claim that
the new stadium must be in London. Why? Who in their right mind gives
two tugs of a dead dog's cock about London? Nobody I know about, for
sure. London's got nothing going for it, but the FA want it to be there
so more of the power-suited yuppies can go to games and waste vast
amounts of money on things whilst simultaneously not giving a toss.
They're driving away real supporters, the ones that care about the
teams, in favour of people that just want to be seen there.
That's why they won't move it from the rat infested gangrenous wound on
the country that is London. They don't want to move it because it'd
upset the people they've been fucking this lunchtime. Hell, it's only
because of them they closed the old stadium so early. It was closed
before they even had plans for a new stadium! It was closed so CEOs
could get their managers and the bit of skirt they were being unfaithful
with this week, go to Wembley, and sully the hallowed turf with their
pathetic attempts at playing football, not because they were good. Not
because they had somehow earned the right to play at this Mecca of the
great sport that is football. No, they got to play there because they
slipped the heads of the FA a nice little wad the last time they met up
in one of their progressive Soho clubs. The glorious memory of 1966, the
pitch invasion that prompted the most memorable piece of commentary
ever, washed down the drain for a couple of grand and a blow job. It's
just bloody typical.
And now, they don't want to move it. There is a site in Birmingham with
fantastic transport links that could be built upon by the Australian
firm that just re-did Aston Villa's ground. They could have the new
stadium done in just over a year. It would cost as much as the original
quote and nothing more. People would be able to come to a centralised
location, and the crowd would go wild to see Owen put a finishing goal
past the Argies, final compensation for Maradonna and his Hand of God.
But the FA don't want that. It has to be in London, they say. Is there
any surprise why? They are polluting and ruining the English game and
wallowing in their own filth while they do it.
Am I mad about this? Take a wild fucking guess, you can't be too far
off.
* * *
And here was me thinking I'd lost my edge... You don't get off that
easily.
The website's stalled pending some graphical wizardry and me figuring
out more CSS. Yes, I heard Satan was buying antifreeze too, but you
never know. I'm going to be bored at work, so what the hell. Send me
feedback! stewart.wilson@eurocopter.com and I'll try and remove myself
from crushing boredom long enough to respond.
I know the last mail was frightening. I was polite. Now you see how odd
I can get when I am desperate. So send me things to rant about, for
fuck's sake! Is it really that hard? I didn't think so. Hell, I wrote
four lines of what I was going to cover in this rant. You don't have to
write much, but it would be nice for you to bother writing at all...
Ah, what the fuck do I care. I'm just the foul-mouthed bastard that
can't go a day without attacking something.
* * *
Stewart Wilson, the Digital Raven
The Basement, 7th August 2001
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